To Be Continued:
The partial mastectomy took a long time to execute
And left a huge raggedy scar
Healing from that partial mastectomy took even longer
And devolved into a psychological chasm 2 times the depth
And breadth of the physical scar from the mastectomy that was raggedy
And huge
Metastatic reactivation of the breast cancer requiring partial mastectomy
That left a huge raggedy scar in the first place now pounds
To pieces
A wound head-set fifty times more implacable and more intractable
Than the psychological chasm produced by the healing process
That was twice as enormously damaging as the surgery
Which left a huge raggedy scar
And so I go
on
From Directed by Desire: The Complete Poems of June Jordan (Copper Canyon Press, 2005). Copyright © 2005, 2017 by the June Jordan Literary Estate. Used with the permission of the June Jordan Literary Estate, www.junejordan.com.
June Jordan
June Jordan was born in New York, New York, on July 9, 1936, and attended Barnard College. She was an activist, poet, writer, and teacher, as well as a prominent figure in the civil rights, feminist, antiwar, and LGBTQ movements of the twentieth century.